12: The Evidence

Summary

Sold a Story: Episode 12 - The Evidence

Released February 27, 2025 by APM Reports

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Introduction: The Crisis in Children's Reading Abilities

Millions of children across the United States struggle with reading, a fundamental skill essential for academic and personal success. Despite decades of scientific research outlining effective methods for teaching reading, many schools continue to rely on outdated or disproven approaches. Sold a Story delves into this educational impasse, focusing on the efforts of four authors and a publishing company that have profited immensely from misleading educational narratives.

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Section 1: Nancy Madden and Bob Slavin – Champions for Educational Reform

The episode begins by introducing Nancy Madden and Bob Slavin, two passionate educators committed to transforming the education system.

• Emily Hanford [00:00]: "In 1969, a young woman named Nancy Madden graduated from high school in Minnesota and went off to Portland, Oregon, to go to Reed College."

Nancy, a product of the 60s activism, met Bob Slavin at Reed College, where their shared concerns about educational inequality, especially for poor Black children, fueled their collaboration.

• Bob Slavin [00:10]: "Reed's a very odd place. I mean, it's where you go to be very intellectual and very disruptive."

Their partnership was rooted in a mutual desire to address the obvious disparities in educational opportunities.

• Bob Slavin [00:35]: "The disparities in opportunity for children were just so obvious at that time."

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Section 2: Challenging the Status Quo – The Coleman Report

Nancy and Bob were inspired to make tangible changes in education despite prevailing doubts about the impact of school quality on student outcomes. This skepticism was largely influenced by the Coleman Report of the 1960s.

• Emily Hanford [02:18]: "James Coleman... found that a student's academic achievement depended a lot on their family's socioeconomic status. In fact, the family a child grew up in seemed to matter more than the school a child went to."

This report suggested that improving schools might not significantly affect student performance, undermining arguments for educational reform focused on school-based interventions.

However, Nancy and Bob believed the report didn't capture the full picture. They noticed variations in how different schools impacted their students, prompting them to investigate what made some schools more effective than others.

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Section 3: Developing "Success for All" – A Whole School Reform Program

Determined to create a solution, Nancy and Bob developed "Success for All," a comprehensive program aimed at overhauling entire schools rather than implementing isolated interventions.

• Bob Slavin [05:12]: "You may be worrying about high school, but if those kids aren't reading by third grade, then you've lost them. You have to do that early part really well."

Their approach was revolutionary, emphasizing early literacy with a phonics-based reading program from day one, contrary to the prevailing educational trends.

• Bob Slavin [05:48]: "We were revolutionary at the time. We put a phonics based beginning reading program in place from day one. Very much opposed to the Zeitgeist at the time."

"Success for All" wasn't merely a reading program; it was a holistic initiative addressing attendance, parental engagement, and tutoring, ensuring that students received comprehensive support.

• Bob Slavin [06:26]: "Kids weren't coming to school, so attendance had to be addressed. Parents weren't engaged, so you had to engage."

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Section 4: Implementing and Validating Success for All

Nancy and Bob didn't just develop the program—they rigorously tested it. Their first study compared five Baltimore schools using "Success for All" with five schools maintaining traditional methods. The results were promising:

• Emily Hanford [10:02]: "The kids in the success for all schools did better on several key measures. They were absent, less, less likely to repeat a year of school. And by the end of third grade, they were about eight months, almost an entire school year ahead in reading."

Independent researchers, like Jeffrey Borman from the University of Chicago, further validated the program's effectiveness, finding sustained benefits in reading proficiency and reduced need for special education.

• Jeffrey Borman [11:14]: "It was quite a rosy picture, a lot stronger impacts than I really imagined."

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Section 5: Adopting Success for All in Steubenville – Overcoming Resistance

In the late 1990s, the Steubenville, Ohio school district faced a dire situation: a new state law mandated that fourth graders pass a reading test to advance, risking a third of students being held back.

Melinda Young, then an elementary principal, and Richard Vernallo, an assistant superintendent, sought effective solutions and discovered "Success for All."

• Melinda Young [14:23]: "We thought, well, we want to be the best."

However, adopting the program wasn't straightforward. Success for All required unanimous teacher approval, leading to a secret, yet unanimous, vote.

• Bob Slavin [15:34]: "If you want real change to occur, you don't need to be fighting against, you know, sabotage going on."

Despite initial resistance, especially from veteran teachers who disliked the scripted nature of the program, comprehensive training and incentives like provided meals helped secure buy-in.

• Lynette Gorman [16:02]: "There were veteran teachers... they were very resistant."

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Section 6: The Rise and Fall of Reading First

Buoyed by the success of "Success for All," the federal government launched the Reading First initiative under President George W. Bush, aiming to promote scientifically based reading programs.

• Bob Slavin [17:38]: "We will launch a new initiative called Reading First."

Reading First sought to standardize reading instruction by endorsing programs proven through rigorous research. "Success for All" and Direct Instruction were among the few programs that met the stringent criteria.

However, problems arose when the federal guidelines clashed with existing policies. The government couldn't officially endorse specific programs, leading to confusion and mismanagement.

• Christopher Peek [18:29]: "Almost every program says they have evidence behind it... It's a lot harder to actually meet that definition."

Additionally, conflicts of interest emerged as some Reading First consultants promoted their own commercially successful, yet unproven, programs.

Bob Slavin and Mari Clay, creator of the Reading Recovery Program, lodged complaints with the Office of the Inspector General, highlighting the mismanagement and bias within Reading First.

• Bob Slavin [21:12]: "Our schools were told, you have to stop using Success for All. It's not on the Reading first list."

The Inspector General's investigation confirmed these issues, leading to congressional hearings and the eventual dissolution of Reading First.

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Section 7: The Aftermath – Impact on Success for All and Educational Policy

The collapse of Reading First had profound repercussions. "Success for All," once a beacon of evidence-based success, saw its adoption plummet from nearly 2,000 schools to about 800.

• Bob Slavin [21:41]: "We had a staff of 500 people and we fired half of them. It was just awful."

Disillusioned with the U.S. policy landscape, Bob Slavin moved to the UK, where his work found a more supportive environment.

• Bob Slavin [25:02]: "He was so frustrated by the policy landscape here in the US that he left. He got an offer from the University of York to start an evidence based policy program in the UK."

Meanwhile, Steubenville remained committed to "Success for All," continuing to see positive outcomes.

• Melinda Young [26:05]: "It just was something that we could become because we feel right now that it is what we are like."

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Section 8: The Ongoing Debate – Science of Reading and Program Approval

With the resurgence of interest in the science of reading, states began establishing lists of approved programs. However, "Success for All" often found itself excluded due to the lingering fallout from Reading First's mismanagement.

• Bob Slavin [28:38]: "This idea of Science of Reading coming..."

In 2015, Congress relaxed the stringent requirements for what constitutes "scientifically based" reading programs, allowing programs without rigorous studies to claim evidence-based status.

• Christopher Peek [26:36]: "They said, let's loosen the requirements. We don't need all that scientifically based reading research anymore."

This shift has led to a proliferation of programs with varying degrees of efficacy, complicating efforts to ensure quality education.

• Christopher Peek [27:10]: "As long as you make a good argument that your program derives some of its lessons from research that counts as evidence based."

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Conclusion: The Legacy of Success for All and the Future of Educational Reform

Sold a Story highlights the complex interplay between research, policy, and commercial interests in shaping educational practices. Nancy Madden and Bob Slavin's dedication to evidence-based reform underscores the potential for effective programs to transform student outcomes. However, their experience with Reading First serves as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of policy implementation and the importance of maintaining integrity in educational initiatives.

Despite setbacks, the principles championed by "Success for All" continue to influence discussions around the science of reading, emphasizing the need for scientifically grounded approaches to education.

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Notable Quotes

• Bob Slavin [05:12]: "You may be worrying about high school, but if those kids aren't reading by third grade, then you've lost them."

• Jeffrey Borman [11:14]: "It was quite a rosy picture, a lot stronger impacts than I really imagined."

• Bob Slavin [21:12]: "Our schools were told, you have to stop using Success for All. It's not on the Reading first list."

• Christopher Peek [26:36]: "They said, let's loosen the requirements. We don't need all that scientifically based reading research anymore."

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Final Thoughts

Sold a Story Episode 12 provides an in-depth exploration of the challenges and triumphs in the quest to improve reading education for millions of children. Through the lens of Nancy Madden and Bob Slavin's journey, the podcast sheds light on the critical importance of evidence-based practices and the obstacles they face within broader educational policies.

For more insights and detailed stories, visit the Sold a Story website and consider leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform to support this essential discourse in education reform.

Transcript

[Emily Hanford]

In 1969, a young woman named Nancy Madden graduated from high school in Minnesota and went off to Portland, Oregon, to go to Reed College.

[Bob Slavin]

Reed's a very odd place. I mean, it's where you go to be very intellectual and very disruptive.

[Emily Hanford]

She was a child of the 60s, protested the Vietnam War, marched for civil rights. And what Nancy was most interested in disrupting was, was education. She wanted to figure out how to make schools better, especially for poor black children.

[Bob Slavin]

The disparities in opportunity for children were just so obvious at that time.

[Emily Hanford]

In college, Nancy met a guy, a fellow student, named Bob Slavin.

[Bob Slavin]

Our first date was to go on a walk to sort of talk about how do we improve education? What can we do?

[Emily Hanford]

Nancy had tutored kids at poor schools in Minneapolis when she was in high school. And Bob had worked with kids in.

[Bob Slavin]

Washington, D.C. there was an orphanage that he was a bus driver for when he was 16 years old. And, you know, we both, as high school kids, knew that there was just so much inequality of opportunity for kids that didn't need to be.

[Emily Hanford]

They wanted to do something about it.

[Unknown]

They.

[Emily Hanford]

They wanted to make poor schools better. But there was doubt at the time about whether improving schools could help poor children, about whether the quality of a school really mattered. Because of a big report that had been released a few years earlier, a report that had shaken the field of education. In the 1960s, the federal government commissioned a sociologist named James Coleman to do a big study of educational opportunity in America. He gathered all kinds of information from thousands of schools. Data on academic achievement, student demographics, teacher training, curriculum. It was one of the largest educational studies ever at the time. And what Coleman found was that a student's academic achievement depended a lot on their family's socioeconomic status. In fact, the family a child grew up in seemed to matter more than the school a child went to. This undercut the argument that improving schools could improve outcomes for kids. But Nancy and Bob and other people, too, were convinced there was more to the story. Because if you dug into the details of Coleman's report, what you could see in the data was that some schools were having more of an impact than others. Some schools were making a difference for kids, and Bob and Nancy wanted to figure out what were those schools doing, what made them effective. I'm Emily Hanford, and this is Sold a Story, a podcast from APM Reports. In this episode, I'm going to tell you the story of a program that Bob Slavin and Nancy Madden created, a program that's proving schools can make a difference it's the program Steubenville started using 25 years ago. A program that's been extensively studied and is backed by substantial evidence. In fact, it's become kind of a poster child for an evidence based program. But what does it mean for something to be evidence based? It's a critical question right now because states are making lists, lists of approved programs, programs they say are backed by the science of reading. But approving programs, making lists, we've tried that before in this country and it kind of backfired and it might be backfiring again. Nancy Madden and Bob Slavin got married. After college, they moved to Baltimore. They both got PhDs and by the 1980s they were working together at a research center at Johns Hopkins University studying educational practices. They were looking for things that worked, things that schools could do to be effective, to make a difference in kids lives. And one day they were at Johns Hopkins eating lunch and a former member of the Baltimore city school board joined them at their table. Nancy says they struck up a conversation.

[Bob Slavin]

And so we're talking about how would you change the schools?

[Emily Hanford]

Things were not good in the Baltimore schools.

[Bob Slavin]

At the time. Baltimore city schools were failing half of their high school students. I mean, they were just dropping out. And he said, this is wrong, this is not good enough.

[Emily Hanford]

And he issued a challenge.

[Bob Slavin]

Here you are, Johns Hopkins University, you know, you're so smart. What would you do?

[Emily Hanford]

Nancy and Bob had been studying what works in education. The school board member wanted to know what would they actually do if it was their job to fix a school system. Here's what they told him.

[Bob Slavin]

You may be worrying about high school, but if those kids aren't reading by third grade, then you've lost them. You have to do that early part really well.

[Emily Hanford]

So the former school board member said, I'll find the money, you go do it. Create a program that will help us fix the schools. Bob and Nancy started with preschool.

[Bob Slavin]

So we started with full time pre K for the language focus because the first thing you have to do is get the language base laid before you even start thinking about letters and sounds and that sort of thing.

[Emily Hanford]

They developed a kindergarten program and a first grade program.

[Bob Slavin]

We were revolutionary at the time. We put a phonics based beginning reading program in place from day one. Very much opposed to the Zeitgeist at the time.

[Emily Hanford]

They weren't interested in what was popular, they were interested in what works and not just what works when it came to reading instruction. They were trying to implement effective practices to address all the things a school needs to do to be successful. And as you heard in the previous episode, it takes more than good instruction to be a successful school.

[Bob Slavin]

Kids weren't coming to school, so attendance had to be addressed. Parents weren't engaged, so you had to engage. Parents had to have tutoring because kids who start to fall behind, if you don't get them right back in so that they can take advantage of the core instruction, then you're just going to keep losing them.

[Emily Hanford]

Nancy and Bob created what's known as a whole school reform program. It wasn't just a reading program. It was a program to improve an entire school. They called their program Success for All. And a big focus of success for all is prevention preventing kids from failing in the first place. Bob liked to use a metaphor when he talked about that one way to.

[Unknown]

Understand how success for all came about and what it's trying to achieve.

[Emily Hanford]

I wasn't able to interview Bob. He died four years ago. This is from a video.

[Unknown]

Consider an old story about a little town that decided to build a gorgeous playground on some land that it had. The problem, however, was that this beautiful land was at the edge of a cliff. And it occurred to the town fathers that there was a danger that children might fall off the cliff. So the local playground board had huge debates. Should we build a fence at the top of the cliff or should we put an ambulance at the bottom? I think if you think about what that story is telling you, you'll realize that to put an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff is the way we do so much ordinarily in schools. Part of the idea of success for all is, is to try to make sure that children don't fall off the cliff in the first place, that they're successful, particularly in reading. From the beginning of the time in.

[Emily Hanford]

School, you met someone else in this podcast who was trying to do exactly the same thing, someone who is trying to prevent reading difficulties, trying to prevent kids from falling off the cliff.

[Mari Clay]

And my idea when I started my special research here in New Zealand was could you see the process of learning to read going wrong?

[Emily Hanford]

Mari Clay, the woman who created the reading recovery program, Mari Clay, had the same goal as Bob Slavin, but her mistake was misunderstanding how kids learn to read, a mistake that can be traced back, at least in part, to the way she did her research. She observed children and came up with a theory, an idea about how they learn. She built her program based on that idea. But then a lot of cognitive science research came along that showed her idea was wrong. Bob Slavin And Nancy Madden took a different approach. They didn't start with an idea about how kids learn to read. They started with a collection of practices backed by rigorous research. Practices like phonics instruction that had already been studied and shown to work.

[Bob Slavin]

We didn't invent a lot of these concepts. We assembled them, you know, tried to look for what is best practice.

[Emily Hanford]

Nancy and Bob were betting that if you put a bunch of effective educational practices together, the result would be a successful school, a school that would make a difference for kids. But Bob and Nancy didn't know if their program would work. It was kind of like they were making a soup. They knew the ingredients were good, but what about the soup? Would the soup taste good? Would the recipe actually work? They wanted to know the answer to that question more than anyone. So as soon as Bob and Nancy created their program, they were studying their program. Their first study compared five schools in Baltimore that had chosen to do success for all with five similar schools that had stuck with business as usual. What they found was that the kids in the success for all schools did better on several key measures. They were absent, less, less likely to repeat a year of school. And by the end of third grade, they were about eight months, almost an entire school year ahead in reading. Bob and Nancy did more studies.

[Bob Slavin]

We were researchers. We did everything as a study.

[Emily Hanford]

And it wasn't just Bob and Nancy studying their own program. By the 90s, independent researchers were also taking an interest in success for all.

[Jeffrey Borman]

Yes? Hi, my name is Jeffrey Borman.

[Emily Hanford]

Jeffrey Borman was a newly minted University of Chicago PhD in 1997 when he got a job as a research scientist at Johns Hopkins. Education research was his thing. Here's why.

[Jeffrey Borman]

It may be silly, but I'm still a strong believer in the idea of the American dream and that through quality education that anyone in our society can, can find success.

[Emily Hanford]

When Jeffrey Borman got to Hopkins, he decided he wanted to do his own study of success for all. He wanted to know if kids who had been in success for all elementary schools were still doing better as they got older.

[Jeffrey Borman]

If you know the history of education, we struggle so much to find interventions, programs, policies that have lasting impacts on kids. And so it was a really important question to me. Did school success for all have a long term effect on kids?

[Emily Hanford]

He looked at how the students in those original five success for all schools in Baltimore were doing by the end of eighth grade.

[Jeffrey Borman]

It was quite a rosy picture, a lot stronger impacts than I really imagined.

[Emily Hanford]

Initially, his study showed that by eighth grade, the success for all Kids were still ahead in reading. They were still less likely to be held back, and they spent less time in special education. That's a big deal. Special education is expensive. So is holding a child back. Think about it. You have to pay for an additional year of schooling. In his study, Jeffrey Borman compared the costs of doing success for all to not doing success for all.

[Jeffrey Borman]

Although Success for All was a rather costly program, it still was so effective in preventing a lot of these other very costly interventions that in the long run it actually cost just the same, but had all of these wonderful impacts on kids.

[Emily Hanford]

The main impact was the kids were better readers. Success for all is now one of the most extensively studied education programs out there. There are dozens of studies that are notable not just because they found positive effects. The studies are notable because they're high quality studies. The U.S. department of Education evaluates programs based on whether the research to support the program was rigorous and well designed. Success for all meets the highest standard for an evidence based program. And that's what Steubenville was looking for 25 years ago. More on that after a break. The schools in Steubenville, Ohio, had a problem. It was the late 1990s, and the Ohio legislature had just passed a new law, a law that said students were going to have to pass the state's fourth grade reading test to move on to fifth grade. And it looked like as many as a third of fourth graders in Steubenville might have to be held back because they weren't reading well enough. The school district had a reading curriculum at the time, but it was basically just a big textbook, a textbook with lots of stuff in it, lessons, stories, worksheets.

[Mari Clay]

A teacher wasn't required to actually go through the textbook in an organized fashion, like they could pick and choose.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Melinda Young, who was an elementary school principal and is now the district superintendent.

[Mari Clay]

It was really left up to the teachers on how they taught reading. You know, they closed their door and they did their thing.

[Emily Hanford]

It was a little bit of a choose your own adventure.

[Mari Clay]

Yes, yes.

[Emily Hanford]

They were looking for something different. We wanted something that worked. Richard Vernallo was an assistant superintendent. He remembers going to meetings with state officials who were advising districts on how they could improve reading achievement. It was at one of those meetings that he learned about success for all. And I brought this and I ran it off yesterday because I knew you were coming. He brought a piece of paper to our interview. It compared several programs available at the time, rated them on how much research evidence there was, and success for all. It looked like it was the best. And so we thought, well, we want to be the best. But before a district can adopt Success for All teachers, teachers have to vote on it. Success for all requires a teacher vote.

[Bob Slavin]

I mean, this is real change.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Nancy Madden.

[Bob Slavin]

If you want real change to occur, you don't need to be fighting against, you know, sabotage going on.

[Mari Clay]

The vote was 100%.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Melinda Young again, the Steubenville superintendent.

[Mari Clay]

And it was a secret vote. So it was a true vote. It wasn't like all of the administrators were in the room and, you know, saying, okay, what's your vote? What's your vote?

[Emily Hanford]

But just because all of the teachers voted yes on Success for All doesn't mean they were all enthusiastic about doing it.

[Mari Clay]

There were veteran teachers in the district. Without a doubt, they were very resistant.

[Emily Hanford]

Lynette Gorman, who was a new teacher at the time, says there was a big sticking point for many of the veteran teachers. They didn't like the scripts. Success for all is what's known as a scripted program. That means it's basically the opposite of choose your own adventure. Success for all provides detailed instructions for how to teach each lesson, including specific things for teachers to say and do. This has always been a controversial aspect of the program. A teacher in Nevada told the Wall street journal in 1999 that Bob Slavin was, quote, killing creative teachers. But remember, Success for All was a collection of effective practices, ingredients that studies showed would likely result in a good soup. But you had to follow the recipe. It wasn't going to work if everyone was choosing their own adventure. Teachers in Steubenville remember hours and hours of training learning how to use the program.

[Mari Clay]

And I just remember tables full of pies.

[Emily Hanford]

Christine Bellotto says the district fed teachers.

[Mari Clay]

Well, fruit pies, cream pies, and we had, like, big lunches. And, yeah, we were fed really good.

[Emily Hanford]

When Steubenville started using Success for All, there were close to 2,000 other schools using it. Interest in the program was growing.

[Jeffrey Borman]

Well, thank you all very much.

[Emily Hanford]

And it seemed like interest was about to grow a lot more.

[Bob Slavin]

We will launch a new initiative called Reading First.

[Emily Hanford]

You heard this earlier in the podcast. George W. Bush on the campaign trail promising a big federal effort to overhaul reading instruction.

[Bob Slavin]

But we will only support effective programs, effective reading strategies.

[Emily Hanford]

The president's advisors wanted to steer the nation's schools away from flawed, ineffective practices like the cueing strategies you've heard about in this podcast. They wanted schools to do things that were effective, like phonics instruction. The goal was to get schools to use programs and practices that were grounded in scientifically based reading research. Congress put that term in the law.

[Christopher Peek]

Scientifically based reading research. That means you have the kind of studies like Bob Slavin did for success for all.

[Emily Hanford]

This is my co reporter, Christopher Peek. He says the law defined scientifically based reading research in a specific way for a reason.

[Christopher Peek]

Almost every program says they have evidence behind it. It's very easy to just say, well, we have this white paper. It's in the back of the book, or it's in the back of the sales materials. It's a lot harder to actually meet that definition of being scientifically based.

[Emily Hanford]

In fact, most people familiar with the reading research seem to agree at the time that there were probably only two reading programs that had been tested and proven with scientific research.

[Christopher Peek]

What you find very quickly when you require extensive levels of research and evidence in order to be able to use something is that there are very few programs that actually meet that bar.

[Emily Hanford]

In fact, most people familiar with the reading research seem to agree at the time that there were probably only two reading programs that have been tested and proven with scientifically based research.

[Christopher Peek]

One was success for all this other one is called direct instruction. Both those programs had been tested, and they were shown to work repeatedly. Other programs weren't able to meet that same bar.

[Emily Hanford]

Success for all did have the studies. So you would think Reading first would have been a boon for them, a real windfall. But to Nancy Madden's surprise, it wasn't.

[Bob Slavin]

Yeah, it was horrendous.

[Emily Hanford]

Here's how the law ran into reality and ended in a bit of a train wreck. A goal of the law was to get schools to use programs backed by scientifically based research. But here's the thing. The federal government isn't supposed to tell schools what programs to use.

[Christopher Peek]

The federal government is not allowed to endorse, recommend, mandate, any curriculum.

[Emily Hanford]

This is reporter Christopher Peek again.

[Christopher Peek]

And that goes back to the founding of the Department of Education. It's literally written to the statute.

[Emily Hanford]

It's a provision to protect local control, which is a fundamental principle in American education. So there was a problem, a contradiction. And as the law got put into practice, things got messy. One thing that happened, lots of reading programs were saying they were aligned with scientific research, even if they didn't have studies that showed they worked. The other thing that happened, some Reading first officials and consultants were authors of reading programs. And when they were giving presentations to state officials, Nancy Madden says they were promoting their own programs.

[Bob Slavin]

Their PowerPoints had examples. And we were not on their list of examples.

[Emily Hanford]

Nancy says schools that were using Success for All started dropping it.

[Bob Slavin]

Our schools were told, you have to stop using Success for All. It's not on the Reading first list. You cannot use it anymore.

[Emily Hanford]

To be clear, there was no official Reading first list, not from the federal government anyway. But some states were making lists. And when a state left Success for All off its list, the message seemed to be, Success for All isn't backed by research. It's not an evidence based program. And that had a big impact on Success for All.

[Bob Slavin]

We had a staff of 500 people and we fired half of them. It was just awful.

[Christopher Peek]

And Bob Slavin, he wanted to do something about it.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Christopher again.

[Christopher Peek]

So we actually filed a complaint with the Office of the Inspector General, the.

[Emily Hanford]

Office of the Inspector General of the US Department of Education, an internal watchdog that investigated alleged wrongdoing in federal education programs.

[Christopher Peek]

So he files a complaint, says, hey, Inspector General, you need to check out this Reading first program. I think they're violating federal law.

[Emily Hanford]

In his complaint, Bob Slavin wrote, the Reading first legislation itself is sound, well intentioned. But Slavin said Reading first had strayed from its intended purpose, that it was not promoting scientifically based reading research, that it had become instead a giant giveaway to publishers who were making millions of dollars on programs that hadn't been tested or proven. And Bob Slavin wasn't the only one who felt shut out by Reading First. So did Mari Clay, the creator of the Reading Recovery Program. The Reading Recovery Program ended up losing schools because of Reading first, too. And just a few months after Bob Slavin filed his complaint with the Inspector General, Reading Recovery filed a complaint. Their complaint said, we join a growing number of educators and scholars who are calling for an investigation. And as you heard earlier in this podcast, this, there was an investigation and congressional hearings and a damning report from the inspector general.

[Jeffrey Borman]

The program known as Reading first is mismanaged, the auditors say, and full of conflicts of interest.

[Emily Hanford]

For example, the inspector general's report said some Reading first officials and consultants with professional ties to reading programs were promoting those programs. And the report said some states felt pressured to use those programs in order to get funding. Reading first was ensnared in a scandal.

[Christopher Peek]

Over programs, and Bob Slavin called for it to end.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Christopher Peek again.

[Christopher Peek]

By the very end of it, he was saying, cut funding for this program. He was so upset with it, Congress.

[Emily Hanford]

Killed the funding and Reading first collapsed. Bob Slavin had spent decades studying effective educational practices and trying to get schools to use them. He had shown that schools can make a difference for kids if they followed the evidence. But he helped bring down the government's big effort to try to get schools to do that. I've talked to several people over the years who expressed bewilderment, even anger about Bob's role in helping to bring down Reading first, because they thought Reading first, even with its flaws, might have been the nation's best hope for improving reading instruction at scale, for helping millions of kids. But Bob didn't think Reading first was going to do that because schools were using programs that hadn't been proven. And in some cases, they were dropping a proven program, his program, in favor of something else.

[Jeffrey Borman]

That was a dark era for Bob.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Jeffrey Borman, the researcher you heard earlier.

[Jeffrey Borman]

He was so frustrated by the policy landscape here in the US that he left. He left the US altogether.

[Emily Hanford]

Bob and Nancy went to England.

[Bob Slavin]

He got an offer from the University of York to start an evidence based policy program in the uk. So we did go to the UK half time.

[Emily Hanford]

Nancy says in England, there was more support for their work.

[Bob Slavin]

The government was interested in evidence and focused on really getting everybody to use the evidence that was being produced.

[Emily Hanford]

And she says England was a nice change of scenery, too.

[Bob Slavin]

We used to buy our meat at the butchery that had been there since the 1300s. That's the part I liked.

[Emily Hanford]

Nancy and Bob continued working with schools and districts in the United States that had stuck with Success for All, like Steubenville. Steubenville didn't drop the program. Success for all was working for them.

[Mari Clay]

SFA just fit us.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Melinda Young, the former principal, who is now the superintendent.

[Mari Clay]

It just was something that we could become because we feel right now that it is what we are like. We are an SFA district. That's when anybody asks, why do we have success? We start with sfa.

[Emily Hanford]

But Success for All is not a popular program. About 800 schools use it now. That's fewer than half as many as 25 years ago. And the requirement in federal law for programs to be based on scientific research. Christopher says Congress dropped that in 2015.

[Christopher Peek]

And they said, we want schools to be able to use a much wider variety of programs. And they changed it. They said, let's loosen the requirements. We don't need all that scientifically based reading research anymore.

[Emily Hanford]

According to current federal law, a program can be considered evidence based without any studies at all. All you need is a rationale, an idea about why your program should work.

[Christopher Peek]

As long as you make a good argument that your program derives some of its lessons from research that counts as evidence based.

[Emily Hanford]

Reading first was trying to get schools to follow the science of reading by using evidence based practice programs. But the whole thing ended up blowing up over controversy about programs. By the end of Reading first, programs seemed kind of like the problem, not the solution. And Christopher says the entire educational publishing industry just looked bad.

[Christopher Peek]

It felt very icky by the end of Reading first and a lot of.

[Emily Hanford]

Schools and districts started turning away from programs they went back to more of a choose your own adventure way of teaching reading. And as you know from listening to this podcast, there was a small company in New Hampshire that could help teachers with that. A company that seemed different from the traditional publishing industry, Heinemann. What Heineman and its star authors were offering wasn't really a program.

[Christopher Peek]

This was Here's a guide and here's some books and fun things you might do to structure your class. So it really was the antithesis of that scripted program. Like Success for All, Heinemann flourished in.

[Emily Hanford]

The wake of Reading First's collapse, in part because what they were offering didn't come from scientists, it came from other educators. But now people are talking about the science of reading again and states are making lists, lists of approved programs because of Solda's story.

[Bob Slavin]

This idea of Science of Reading coming.

[Emily Hanford]

To schools across the country. We were thrilled.

[Mari Clay]

We had a very short window to get things in place. As naive as I guess I was, I really just never gave it a second thought. SFA was not on the list.

[Emily Hanford]

Why get rid of something that is proven to work the state lists? And why success for all isn't on a lot of those lists. Next, a story. We have more about this podcast on our website, including a video that tells the story behind Solda's story. You can find links in the show notes if you want to help other people find this show, one of the best things you can do is leave a review on your favorite podcast app. Soul to Story is an APM Reports podcast produced by me, Emily Hanford with reporter Christopher Peek. Curtis Gilbert is our editor. Chris Julen does mixing and sound design. Our fact checker is Betsy Towner Levine. Andy Cruz is our digital editor. Our theme music is by Wonderly. Final mastering of this episode was by Derek Ramirez. The Solstice Story reporting and production team includes Kate Martin, Olivia Cilcote, Carmelo Walianone, Emily Havik, and Emily Corwin. Additional help on this episode from Kaspar Fan au. Special thanks to Margaret Goldberg, Tom Scheck is the deputy managing editor of APM Reports. Our executive editor is Jane Helmke. Leadership support for Soul to Story comes from Hollyhock foundation and Oak Foundation. Support also comes from IBIS Group, Esther A. And Joseph Klingenstein Fund, Kenneth Raynan foundation, and the listeners of American Public Media.